Wow, that was some cliffhanger. I really hope we don't get screwed out of another season.

So it looks like there might have been a closer link between plotlines than we thought. Was the Corporate War orchestrated by the alien-infested undercover clones to ultimately bring this about? In any case, the finale nicely brought together the plots of the Blink Drive, the Zairon insurgency, the Corporate War, and the Smoky Aliens into one
horrible train wreck. Things look about as bad as they can be for everyone: Two is possessed, Three is off with Portia, Four is dethroned and his remaining loyalists are being wiped out, Five is alone on the Raza with the weird guy from the alternate universe, Six may be dead, and Android has been damaged to an unknown degree. Oh, and the universe isn't doing too well, either, since it's just been invaded by the massive and unstoppable black ships from another dimension.

It's Six that I'm really worried about, since it seemed like he was out of the show several times already. This may be the last straw.

But here we are at the end of the season and so many plotlines are still left dangling. We got no tease about what might be going on the the Android Rebellion or Sarah or Two's offspring-- we did get something about Five's sister, but I didn't quite get it.

The connection is that Five's sister's adoptive mother is Alicia Reynaud.

Reynaud was the one that they stole the blink drive from --using the key that Five had in her possession from before the memory-wipe (until now, we had no idea where that key came from). If Five's sister is in her family, it seems that she's the one who passed the key to Five.

Reynaud was also shown to know who Five was (as Emily Kolburn), and was actively hunting her; she's the one who sent Arax to befriend them while they were in prison, in order to get her hands on Five's key. She's also connected to Ferrous Corp (who were apparently the intended recipients of either the drive or the key), who were the ones who seem to have started this war (and whose shipyard Mikkei, Teku, and the Raza just blew up).

Which could mean that Ferrous Corp has an alien sleeper agent in their command structure, if RJDiogenes is right about the aliens triggering this war to destabilize the galaxy (which seems like the logical twist, using the same tactics as the Dominion and the Sith).

The connection is that Five's sister's adoptive mother is Alicia Reynaud.

Reynaud was the one that they stole the blink drive from --using the key that Five had in her possession from before the memory-wipe (until now, we had no idea where that key came from). If Five's sister is in her family, it seems that she's the one who passed the key to Five.

I remember Five saying (in a memory flashback) that she got the key when she picked the pocket of a bearded man. After which her friends were promptly all killed. (Though I don't remember where she was during that attack, as she was unharmed. And that seems way less like a coincidence now.) Later, when Alicia Reynaud was hunting Five to get the key back, we saw that her top employee (head of security? top assistant?) was a man with a beard.

This is where it gets a little fuzzy to me. So the sister comes to visit, brings her mother, who brings her assistant along, who just happens to have the super-valuable blink drive key in his pocket? And Five just happens to swipe that, of all things? Hmm, your theory of the sister giving it to Five is starting to make more sense, Five must have lied to TJ about where she got it. But why would the sister give it to her? No clue!

And yes, as you said, Alicia Reynaud did seem to know for certain that Five had the key: "hello pumpkin". Definitely something more going on there!

SFG

"A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after." - Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger's life was a picture of an idea in flight, and the idea will continue long after. As long as there are people with goodness and courage in their hearts, the idea will continue forever.

Yup. That's pretty much the high end of cable season lengths these days. Killjoys has 10-episode seasons -- which may be a factor in why its storytelling seems more streamlined and efficient than DM's.

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The problem with this lollapalooza finale is that the Raza crew being able to set things right will never be convincing without some tacky deus ex machina.

Have they ever really set anything right? That was kind of the payoff of season 2's arc -- they tried to make a positive difference and instead everything went to hell.

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time

That was a crazy finale that, like others have pointed out, seemed to bring all the disparate threads together. The episode was tense and did keep me glued to the screen.

It does seem likely that the aliens have engineered the corporate war. I'm sure it's not all them since the corporations seem eager to screw each other over but the aliens easily could have made sure war happened earlier and in a way that benefited them.

I do wish the show had done more with the aliens. Sure, they were apparently introduced in a season 2 episode but almost no one here could remember it. Then they randomly popped back up earlier this season.

The sight of the black ships appearing out of the rip in space and time was chilling. The aliens played their hand really well and it's going to be hard to fight back against them.

That does make me wonder how the next season will go. Will the threat of the aliens be something that looms over the entire season or will they be dealt with fairly quickly?

The first major space fleet vs. space fleet battle the show has done and I thought it was awesome. I wasn't really sure who would win.

I knew Ryo would live but I didn't guess the reason why he would live. I thought Two just wouldn't be able to go through with it.

The Raza crew really need to deal with their doubles. It's getting ridiculous how often the doubles are screwing them over.

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Things look about as bad as they can be for everyone: Two is possessed, Three is off with Portia, Four is dethroned and his remaining loyalists are being wiped out, Five is alone on the Raza with the weird guy from the alternate universe, Six may be dead, and Android has been damaged to an unknown degree. Oh, and the universe isn't doing too well, either, since it's just been invaded by the massive and unstoppable black ships from another dimension.

It's pretty insane how things have been left. I am worried about Six but I hope he's not dead. The show can't afford to lose another regular at this point, especially since any characters they do bring on and develop they quickly get rid of.

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Have they ever really set anything right? That was kind of the payoff of season 2's arc -- they tried to make a positive difference and instead everything went to hell.

They try but you are right in that they usually make things worse. Look at the colony world they saved this season. It was gassed by Ferrous Corps. a few episodes later. Getting helped by the Raza seems to be a death sentence.

"You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders."
--Jor-El

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job: it's a depression when you lose yours.
-- Harry S. Truman

That was a crazy finale that, like others have pointed out, seemed to bring all the disparate threads together.

Except the android-uprising thing. And whatever happened to Adrian and Solara.

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It does seem likely that the aliens have engineered the corporate war. I'm sure it's not all them since the corporations seem eager to screw each other over but the aliens easily could have made sure war happened earlier and in a way that benefited them.

Maybe, but it seems Dwarf Star is the main corp they control, but it was Ferrous that tried to start the war. (Although Five averted their plan to bomb the station, and then Ryo blew it up anyway to make sure the war happened.) If anything, the aliens' actions here were designed to negate the threat the corporations posed -- Ferrous's new fleet was the biggest corporate threat, and they've now destroyed it pre-emptively and taken a number of other corps' ships out in the process. So I'm not convinced they wanted the war. Yes, it would be a heck of a coincidence for the war and the alien invasion to happen so close together, but maybe the onset of the war compelled the aliens to accelerate their plans in order to nip the threat in the bud before Ferrous grew too powerful. Or something.

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I do wish the show had done more with the aliens. Sure, they were apparently introduced in a season 2 episode but almost no one here could remember it. Then they randomly popped back up earlier this season.

This show often feels very clumsily structured and paced.

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It's pretty insane how things have been left. I am worried about Six but I hope he's not dead. The show can't afford to lose another regular at this point, especially since any characters they do bring on and develop they quickly get rid of.

Since Possessed Two modified the blink drive to open a dimensional rift instead of exploding, I suspect Six is on the other side of the rift.

I agree, I wouldn't want the show to lose Roger Cross. I met him briefly at the Shore Leave Convention a couple of years ago, and he seems like a really nice guy. He's played a lot of heavies, but Six is a lot closer to how he is in person.

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time

Yeah, this. It always feels to me like they structure each episode with one of those lottery machines with bouncing ping-pong balls, each ball with a different plot-thread written on it. Whichever two or three balls pop up - let's plop those elements into an episode and go with it, and every once in a while they add a new ball or remove one.

They've consistently pulled it out in the end with a fairly satisfying ending to the season, but it's all so random that it never really builds any momentum for me.

For this season, I'm pleasantly intrigued by the Two's daughter ball they've added, and I'm hopeful that they'll backburner the Zairon dumpster fire now that they've maneuvered it so that Four can have a reason to be back on the team, but I'm also not super happy with the "Black Ships" escalation in the aliens' role. They feel too stereotypically "Big Bad"-ish, and this show gets along fine with its human enemies/frenemies. They don't need to a Gou'a'ld or Wraith corollary in the mix.

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It's pretty insane how things have been left. I am worried about Six but I hope he's not dead.

At this point, I won't believe he's gone unless he dies on-screen, especially as part of a cliffhanger. He's seemed like he was being written off too many times now, and after I freaked at the first one, I've decided to have more faith. I wonder if they have some sort of limit to the number of episodes Roger Cross is contracted for each season? They've been so consistent in finding ways to get him off-screen for a few episodes, it seems like there's got to be more to it than just repetitive writing.

- Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

- Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart. (Proverbs 3:3)

Oh, well. I'll miss the cast, but I've been getting increasingly frustrated with the clumsy plotting. As for the dangling story threads, this series started as a comic, so maybe they'll do another comic to wrap it up.

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time

Well, I guess they won't have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to keep the characters alive after the events of the finale. I will miss these characters but the show hasn't really been the same since we found out who the characters were before and they killed off One. I do wish people could tell SF stories on TV and in movies that weren't all about massive threats to all of humanity. More stuff like The Martian and Arrival, but on tv, please. Even ST: Discovery is looking a bit too gung-ho for me, although its arc should be more about peace-making than conquest.